


The Game

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-31
Updated: 2006-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-19 06:37:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12405021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: The year is 1942 and the entire world is at war. For Filius Flitwick, the war is a voyage of self-preservation and self-discovery.//Scrivenshaft C7 entry 'Raising The Bar'.





	The Game

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick. 

It isn’t easy being pulled in every direction, every move one makes being monitored being on every side in this gruesome war. Filius likes to think of the war as a prism, with a thousand different sides, but when you pass the light through them they are all the same. 

His mother likes prisms. 

His mother likes prisms because they trap the light like magic, only there’s no magic involved.

Filius doesn’t like to admit it, but he wishes there was no magic involved in his life. He likes to dream that he is a Muggle. That he isn’t a disfigured part-goblin with thousands of lives relying on him. That one night he could sleep soundly, knowing that his life makes no difference. Filius matters to everyone and the irony is that he just wants to fade into the background.

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick.

It isn’t easy having to betray everyone he loves in order to stay alive. It isn’t easy having to say to one of them, that he knows where one member of Dumbledore’s squad lives, and in the same hour tell the other that he knows who the Black Count’s newest recruit is. It isn’t easy when everyone trusts that you are on _their_ side and yet in yourself you just don’t know. 

Filius doesn’t know. Filius is on the fence, with a bottomless pit on either side.

On one hand, Dumbledore. Dumbledore, a great wizard and a great man. The side of good, the side of _righteousness._ But also the side of piety and holiness. The side where Filius is a good boy who always plays by the rules. The side which Filius serves through _duty_ and _honour._ The side which offers no reward because it doesn’t see why it should.

On the other hand, _him._ The dark wizard that Muggles call the Fuhrer, or sometimes Hitler and wizards call the Black Count, or sometimes Grindelwald. He makes Filius _want_ to be loyal, he makes Filius want to fight and to kill them all, the ones that Muggles call Jews and wizards call half bloods. He instills in Filius a fierce determination that Filius knows does not truly reside in him but, oh, how he wishes it did. With him, Filius can have whatever he wants. 

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick.

Tonight Filius is going on a mission for Dumbledore. A Black Knave, or Nazi as Muggles know them, is believed to be planning an attack on a half-blood. Filius is going to the meeting; he is going to report back to Dumbledore.

The Black Count knows this. Filius told him. And he will tell Dumbledore that he told the Black Count. And on and on until Filius’ fifteen year-old head spins. When Filius closes his eyes he sees an amalgamation of Dumbledore and the Count. Dumbledore is coloured pastel pink and the Count is dark red, just the colour of crusty, dried blood. It is in these rare moments that the sensible part of Filius’ mind awakens and tells him that it’s unhealthy and he’s an idiot and asks how he got here.

Filius knows that it’s all a huge game. Something like the secrets passed around the playground. Except now the secrets involve lives and deaths and the difference between loyalty and betrayal. Except for Filius, it’s all the same. If there’s one thing that the Count taught him is that no one is indispensable.

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick.

It isn’t easy when you haven’t been alive for two decades and yet every move and every word could deny your survival. When you are a child soldier for both sides and no one knows and you know that eventually the pretending will end and you will be forced to show your true colours. Filius doesn’t know what his true colours are. He couldn’t honestly tell you where his heart lies. That scares him a lot more than death. Filius has spent so long being two different people that he doesn’t know which one is truly him and there is a gnawing feeling within him that neither one is.

Filius dreams of running away. Of hiding out somewhere and leaving the war behind him. But he can’t. He can’t bring himself to leave a battle he is so intrinsically part of. He doesn’t realize that without him, there might be no war. He is part of the life of this conflict and he’s in it deeper than Dumbledore, deeper than the Count, deeper than anyone. Filius dreams of running away, but it will always just be a dream.

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick.

Filius knows that sooner or later he will have to make the choice. He blots it out, he ignores it, he childishly hopes it will never happen. But it will and subconsciously, Filius has already chosen. Subconsciously, he chose at the beginning and this is just playing for time. Subconsciously, Filius is loyal to one. Consciously, however, he plays for both teams and it hurts, it hurts his head. His conscious and his subconscious at war just like everyone else.

Dumbledore is so _kindly,_ so _noble_ and so _wise._

The Count is everything else.

It isn’t easy being fifteen and being Filius Flitwick. 


End file.
